


The Sorrows of Young Jon Snow

by hawkeyescoffee



Series: Jonsa Week 2019 by Aleks [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Consequences of Resurrection?, F/M, Hints At Emotionless Jon, Jonsa Reuniun, Pining, Season/Series 06, Sharing a Bed, dreaming the truth, mostly?, pining jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-07 20:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21464104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkeyescoffee/pseuds/hawkeyescoffee
Summary: He saw her across the yard, way before she saw him and his heart just stopped. He feared he might die after all. She rode in with a tall blonde woman and a young lad but Jon could only look at his sister. How beautiful she was with snow in her fiery hair.Jonsa Week Day 2: Quotes - Colors - (Tropes)
Relationships: Jon Snow & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: Jonsa Week 2019 by Aleks [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1546636
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	The Sorrows of Young Jon Snow

He saw her across the yard, way before she saw him and his heart just stopped. He feared he might die after all. She rode in with a tall blonde woman and a young lad but Jon could only look at his sister. How beautiful she was with snow in her fiery hair.

She dismounted and he wanted to go run for her, hug her, hold her tight and never let go. She was the first member of his family that he got to see after their father died, their older brother died and here she was: a woman grown. But it was as if he could not breath.

Finally, she caught his eye, he saw her inhale sharp and deeply, her face breaking in disbelieve. Blue eyes shining, whether it was with hope or with unshed tears he could not tell and before he could say anything or think anything, he was already hurrying towards her as if his feet worked on their own.

But shortly before he reached for her he stopped, uncertainty spreading in his mind like a fire. Just because he was glad and fucking over the moon to see her alive and breathing, didn’t mean she was as happy to see him again. Wouldn’t she have liked it better if Robb were alive? To see Arya if she was still alive somewhere? Bran? Rickon? But him? There was a moment where he didn’t dare to touch her but Sansa looked at him like _that_, with hope and cautious joy and he could not help himself.

And then finally, _finally_ he could wrap his arms around her and hold her close. She returned the sentiment. He thought that he might suffocate, she clutched at him so tight and desperate, but he barely felt the discomfort. He felt her hair and skin on his neck as she nuzzled her face into him. It made her smaller, like she wanted to vanish in her brothers embrace.

Hugging Sansa was better than he imagined it to be. She was _home_. It was strange in an almost delusional kind of way. If someone told him back when he left Winterfell that he would be so soul crushing relived to see her again, that she would be so glad to see him again, that they would be all that they had left, that so much would happen to them. He would have laughed at their faces. The Sansa he knew back then wanted to become a Queen and would not concern herself with people who were underneath her, like her bastard brother. They had a friendly but strained relationship, if one could call it a relationship, because Sansa adopted the disdain that her mother held for him. They loved the same people but they could as well have been strangers growing up next to each other.

But he didn’t have much time to bury his changed feelings, because when they moved and ate together in the Castle, talked about their childhood, laughed together, she asked him to forgive her and he did, being all smiles. They talked so much. He watched her cough out her ale and Gods, he was doomed.

The time flew with her by his side. He almost forgot the things that transpired since he came back to life. The life and questionable destiny the red woman and her God had in store for him. Since he found life again it was like he never stopped bleeding out in the snow, all he was, was cold and numb and breathing felt foreign. He did not feel remorse when he hung his murderers, people whom he lived with and respected for years. Thorne had been a cruel and unforgiving teacher but he taught him well. Jon could not bring himself to spare him, not even little Olly could make him change his mind. He had executed every single one of them and he did not even care to waste a single thought on any of them. But sitting here next to Sansa, next to family, he felt at peace.

He felt warm. He felt alive.

He had seen her and his heart had beaten like he finally, finally came alive. It was as if he just now started to live again. He could not put into words back then, but now hours later he understood. She was warmth. Putting his arms around her, pulling her close, feeling her warmth on his skin, was like walking to a fire-warm room for the first time after an impossible long journey through snow and frost. Jon was like a figure child to the bone, so cold and frozen that he did not even notice anymore, but she was fire that thawed him, made him a little more human. Was he even human since he came back? Was he better left dead? Could he even defeat the White Walkers or was he left to fail? Why him? Why?

Sansa put a hand on his shoulder, warm reassuring touch. “What are you thinking about?”, she watched him with tired but worried eyes. He thought about lying to her for a moment, telling her that he was fine, but he also knew that she was smart and observant and- G_ods_, he didn’t even know what happened to her, since- lying was not an option, it was not fair, but he could not tell her, not now. So, he just shook his head with a tired smile. “Not now, not here. I’ll tell you later. Just- let me sit here for a while with you - enjoy the night.” He could not help himself. He wanted to keep her safe from the horrible things that happened to him. Of course, rationally he knew that bad things must have happened to her too. He knew a bit about the Lannisters and the Boltons but no definite information found their way this far north and she was his little sister after all.

On a whim he took her hand. Warm, secure, home. She smiled and took it. They sat there at the fire for a while longer, enjoying each other’s company.

Later that night Jon sat on his bedside, the bedside in the Lord Commander’s chamber, not really his bedside anymore, but Edd had insisted him to use it one last time. Jon not really comfortable with this decision had offered the more spacious (even if not by much) bed to Sansa because she was the heir to Winterfell as he was concerned and she deserved good things but she just shook her head and said that she was happy to sleep in a bed at all. (That didn’t help with Jons guilt)

Rationally he knew he should sleep. They had to find a way to help Sansa tomorrow and he needed his rest for that but he could not keep his head clear of the confusing emotion that whirled there. It was as if he was experiencing feelings for the first time. Helplessly unable to name anything that tucked at his heart so violently.

Eventually sleep came in a light catnap, but he dreamed, if one could call it that, for the first time since he came back to life. It was a haze of fire-red hair and light eyes, tingling touch and melodic laughter. His heart ached. It was a feeling as it would burn out of his chest right here, leaving him dead again. He saw the silhouette of Ygritte’s face: the first girl he ever loved.

_But was she?_

Jon seemed perplex by that question, coming seemingly from deep within him. Was it just his subconscious mind playing tricks on him? Was is it the red woman’s God, that might have nestled his way into his mind? Was it something, someone older? Was is it just his imagination?

_Was she the first girl you ever loved?_

Jon shuddered. (Was that real? Was it just his dream-self?) Of course Ygritte had been the one. There was no question for him here. She had been so much of his joy, his happiness in life with her sharp tongue and soft concern, with her bright mind and frost forged will. Jon had been sure that since she died, he never would be as carefree and happy as with her by his side. For him so much was obvious, but the voice in his mind, whoever it was, had other plans, because Jon watched as the vague form of Ygritte’s face shifted.

It became _Sansa’s. _

Young Sansa.

The Sansa he watched sitting in the hall with her friends: Hair shining like copper in the low candle light and her blue eyes like pale frost in the darkness. The few occasions she talked to him, addressed him with cool politeness and the even sparser times she had touched him, warm and unsettling for his younger self. The times she was sitting next to Robb at dinner, laughing quietly about his silly jokes.

Sansa now: Who put disrespectful men in their places with a sniding comment, who wore her red hair like a crown, her pain like a badge of honor: She survived crueler man then the criminals manning the wall. But when she was with him, she worried about him, apologized with sad, blue eyes and smiled a soft smile in his direction. She was cleverer than a lot of the people that wanted harm for her. Pain and monsters had been her mentors but she learned and saw things.

The Sansa he looked at now was as sharp and unforgiving as ice, but with him she melted a bit and the loneliness within him melted a bit in sync.

A knock on the door startled him awake. And for a moment he didn’t know were he was and what happened, desperately clutching his sword. But he was still in the Lord Commander’s bed and outside it was still dark and cold. Has he slept more than a few minutes?

Groggily he hurled himself up. His limps protested, was he warm and sleepy, but it knocked again: low but urgent and he got over there opened it just a crack. “Yes? What-?”

It was Sansa and the question died in his mouth. She was freshly bathed and looked already healthier with a good meal in her belly. She wore a long night gown that was just an old but clean linen cloth, hastily tailored together over it she wore a thin looking blanket. “Jon.”, she whispered his name. “I-“, stopping she rubbed her cold face. “Can I come in? I mean- I-“, she sputtered a bit but Jon made room for her to enter anyway.

When he closed the door she was crouching by the fire, not facing him. Her silhouette dark against the remains of fire. “I’m sorry that I woke you-“, she faced the embers. Jon waited for her to continue. If it was easier like this, for her to say what she needed him to hear, so be it. He wasn’t the prime example of good communication skills anyway.

“But I could not sleep. Alone I mean-“ a sharp breath later: “ I wake up in the dark and I think I’m still there in the prison he made for me in Winterfell. I believe he will come through the door any minute to torment me. I-“

She turned to face him, barely composed, red strands cupping her unkempt face. “It is not that bad when I have someone in the room with me- I know it is too much to ask. You have your own problems and you need your sleep but could I sleep in here with you? It will be no bother. I can sleep on the floor-“ He gestured for her to stop. And said: “If anyone sleeps on the floor it is me. I-“

“No.”, her face was determined. “No?”, he asked somewhat amused, because it was surprising how she just told him off. “No.”, she repeated simple. “I will not sleep on the bed when you sleep on the floor-“ “Well,”, Jon looked at her now openly smiling: “It will be a cold night with both of us on the floor.”, She shoved him then, light and nonthreatening, hiding her laughter behind a fake scowl.

“Are you sure you don’t want to use the bed, Sansa?”, he asked again then because she shouldn't sleep on the goddamned floor. Sighing she tugged at his sleeve. He still didn’t change out of his clothes. “Only if you share the bed with me.” “When I _what-now_?”

He eyed her perplexed. It was highly inappropriate for her to share her bed with an unmarried man, especially since she was technically still married. It could destroy her reputation, her inheritance, her future and she suggested it so freely to him, he didn’t know-

“What is the problem? You are my brother, Jon. No one will say anything about you helping me through a nightmare. I doubt there will be rumors. I am too tired to think about such silly outcomes. Besides, everyone knows that you are honorable, even if we were not siblings you would never-“ The rest of her explanation faded out by the noise of rushing blood in his ears.

Sansa was his sister! How could he think about her in such a sinful way? Of course, it was meaningless if they shared a blanket, they were not Jamie and Cersei Lannister.

He tried to think about the dream he just had but his mind came out almost blank. Anyhow there was a nagging feeling in the back of his brain, that it had something to do with his foolishness right now. He didn’t want to sleep in such proximity to his sister after that. He wanted to bury himself in the snow outside and fucking freeze to death.

Fuck the Lord of Light and his dumb intentions. If coming back to life made him look at Sansa like that, he wanted to be stabbed again- What kind of- _Ygritte._

He dreamed about Ygritte, he was sure. Yes, that was it. Sansa may remind him of her a bit, but he was just tired and lonely. He was not like this. He was better. Gods be with him. He needed to sleep and maybe he would feel less guilty then.

“Jon?”, there was Sansa’s soft voice again, grounding him to reality. But he didn’t answer her, and only unlaced his boots, crawling into bed fully dressed. After a moment of hesitation Sansa followed his lead.

It was awkward at first and it took a while for them to find a position where they both were comfortable and touching as little as possible. Jon was too exhausted to waste energy on his troubled emotion. They had so much to talk about, so much to do. And he would tell her about his death, the blackness, his resurrection but it all had to wait until she had the strength to tell him her hardships too. He wanted to listen to her.

He felt her hand taking his again, squeezing it under the warmth of the blankets. He did not see her face in the dark anymore but she wished him a silent ‘good night’.

That was enough for now.


End file.
